Saturday, August 3, 2024, 9:28 am | Randy Thomasson
Park Fire map as of Saturday, August 3, 2024
The Park Fire is now the 4th largest in recorded CA history!
What causes “monster” fires? The highly-combustible “fuel” of dead trees and dead brush, and congested live trees and live brush.
The annual “monster” fires are because the ruling Democrat Party politicians REFUSE to manage the forest and wilderness areas (clearing out dead trees, thinning thickets of live trees, establishing wide enough fire breaks, and much more). This unloving government is why California is again on fire.
In addition to dishonestly blaming heat, rain, and wind, some media outlets are also mentioning what bad government is entirely responsible for — out-of-control vegetation:
Associated Press, July 28, 2024: “…dry fuels and stronger winds were increasing the fire danger…fed by lots of dead plants that dried up after several years of rainfall…Despite the improved fire weather in Northern California, conditions remained ripe for even more blazes to ignite.”
San Francisco Chronicle, July 27, 2024: “Scientists say it’s the combination of parched landscape and build up of vegetation that is making the fire especially devastating…Two consecutive wetter-than-normal winters staved off drought conditions, revitalizing forests and producing ample growth of grass and brush…record-breaking heat this summer dried out this vegetation, turning it into prime wildfire fuel…This means plenty of fuel and no burn areas to stop the fire from spreading…the fire burned upslope through canyons and moved toward “dense forest and even forest plantations and clear cuts, which is even more flammable than a natural forest,” Swain said…“There’s essentially nothing to stop it,” Swain said. “It’s decades worth of dense brush kiln-dried by record-breaking heat.”
So when you listen to Big Media reports about California wildfires, filter out their biased emphasis on the weather. It’s outrageous that CalFire has called in meteorologists, when decades ago, righteous, pro-people California state government invited logging companies to thin out forests, did controlled burns, and promoted open grazing.
You should also question CalFire for frequently blaming lightning or listing a cause of a mammoth wildfire as “undetermined.” Until scrubbed from its own page by Biden & Co., the federal Department of the Interior educated Americans that among wildfire causes, only “10 percent are started by lightning or lava.”
Read this article to learn how the environmental-wacko groups and their Democrat Party political prostitutes CAUSE the development and spread of “monster” fires. And see the infographic below, showing the 9 largest wildfires in California’s recorded history have occurred recently and all these 9 under Democrat Party governors.
With Democrat Party politicians controlling California state government, get ready for more “monster” fires this year, with more destruction of lives and property, and more tax dollars burning up at the same time.
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” The Bible, Genesis 1:27-28
The California Supreme Court has unconstitutionally called something they don’t like a “revision,” removing it from the ballot, and preventing California voters from even voting for protection against more money grabs. More
In the face of this tyrannical attack and significant loss, don’t collapse in cynicism. Instead, fight back by sharing this post. Tell others, “If you vote for Democrat Party politicians, you’re voting for tyranny and higher taxes.”
The “Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act” would have amended the California Constitution to define all state and local levies, charges, and fees as taxes. The initiative would have also required new or increased taxes to be passed by a two-thirds legislative vote in each chamber and approved by a simple majority of voters. It would also have increased the vote requirement for local taxes proposed by local government or citizens to a two-thirds vote of the local electorate.
How would you rule on keeping or removing ballot measures already qualified by hundreds of thousands of signatures of registered voters?
See these facts:
CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION, ARTICLE II (regarding ballot initiatives)
Section 1: All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require.
Section 8(a): The initiative is the power of the electors to propose statutes and amendments to the Constitution and to adopt or reject them.
Section 8(d): An initiative measure embracing more than one subject may not be submitted to the electors or have any effect.
Did you catch that? This is freedom for the People to qualify one-subject initiatives!
So where did a prohibition of a “revision” of the California Constitution come from?From the California Supreme Court itself, beginning in 1978. Yet now, the state high court has abandoned its respect for legal definitions and is grabbing more power.
Specifically, this Democrat-Party-dominated, 7-judge court is broadly defining “revision” to be any tough, single-subject reform, such as no money-grabs (tax increases, tax extensions, fee increases, etc.) without a majority vote of the People.
But Newsom’s activist judges are wrong. A “revision” makes changes throughout a written constitution, covering multiple subjects — which is vastly different from a single-subject initiative such as tax relief:
From the introduction of “The Revision of California’s Constitution” by Eugene C. Lee in 1991 (Lee was “a leading scholar of California state and local government and former Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley”):
By explicit language in the constitution concerning initiatives and by court interpretation with respect to measures arising in the legislature, amendments are required to be limited in scope. As far back as 1894, the California supreme court distinguished between a “revision” of the constitution and a mere” amendment” thereof (Livermore v. Waite 102 Cal. 113). As reiterated in 1978, the court held that a “revision” referred to a “substantial alteration of the entire constitution, rather than to a less extensive change in one or more of its provisions” (Amador Valley Joint Union High School District v. State Board of Equalization 22 Cal. 3d 208).
“A revision…is a more significant alteration to a document that involves a complete review and reworking of its content. It is a process of making extensive changes to a document, often with the goal of improving its overall quality or effectiveness.”
Under these definitions, The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act was not a “revision,” but a bona fide amendment that should have been allowed on the ballot in respect for our Constitution and for jealously guarding voter rights.
For the current state constitution has hundreds of sections within 35 articles. Yet The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act would have only amended the California Constitution in 6 sections of 4 articles (Article XIII): Section 3 of Article XIII A, Section 1 of Article XIII C, Section 2 of Article XIII C, Section 3 of Article XIII D, Sections 1 and 14 of Article XIII.
So it wasn’t a “revision” that was a “substantially alteration of the entire constitution,” but an amendment to the state constitution that only changed “one or more of its provisions.” What’s more, the Act satisfied the long-standing state high court standard of having a single-subject — taxes.
Bottom line, the California Supreme Court, comprised of 6 Democrats and 1 RINO, is unconstitutional for placing itself above the written State Constitution and yanking this constitutionally-valid taxpayer protection initiative from the ballot. They are anti-People tyrants!
The 7-member California Supreme Court has 3 nominees of Democrat Party Gov. Gavin Newsom and 3 nominees of Democrat Party Gov. Jerry Brown. Two of Newsom’s three picks were confirmed by current, corrupt, unconstitutional Attorney General Rob Bonta and two other members of the “Commission on Judicial Appointments,” so those are Bonta’s “picks” too. The sole “Republican” on the state high court is 75-year-old Carol Corrigan, a former Democrat, a self-proclaimed “moderate,” and a likely homosexual.
From the Los Angeles Times 2005: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Court of Appeal Justice Carol A. Corrigan, a moderate Republican, to the California Supreme Court on Friday in a move that is likely to shift the conservative-leaning court toward the center. In an interview before her appointment, Corrigan repeatedly described herself as a moderate and a centrist. She switched her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in 1995 after then-Gov. Pete Wilson appointed her to the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. “I think I would probably be a centrist anyplace I found myself,” she said. “I was a moderate Democrat, and now I am a moderate Republican…. I am moderate on virtually all things.”
Can this be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court? A federal lawsuit can be tried, but it is unlikely to succeed. But what each of us can do is tell others that voting for Democrrats = tyranny and higher taxes. Because everything about this is state jurisdiction. The only exceptions might be Article IV, Section 4 “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”) or the Fourteenth Amendment (“nor shall any State deprive any person of…property, without due process of law“). But winning at the U.S. Supreme Court is a bad bet, due to cowardly Republicans on the bench and too much “state jurisdiction” precedent to the contrary.
* * *
So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others, and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the honours of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch. Greek historian Polybius (203 BC – 120 BC) in The Histories
In California, liars and thieves are trying to make you poorer, which is why SaveCalifornia.com is urging you to vote against all money-grabs.
Today, I want to explain why Democrat- and RINO-run cities are so tempted to make you poorer. I’m going to try to say it simply, with lots of evidence, and with a couple of cartoons to illustrate.
But first, please know I strongly support moral/ethical police officers and firefighters, and the necessary services they provide. Yet I adamantly oppose thieving union bosses and their prostituting city officials for the government waste, fraud, and abuse they promulgate.
Now for my explanation:
In California’s March 5 primary election, more than 100 local governments are trying to trick you out of your hard-earned money. These money-grabs are on your ballot in the form of tax increases, tax extensions, bonds, fees, or assessments. Yet all are deceptive and wasteful. Unless you vote no on all money-grabs, you’ll be taken advantage of and become poorer, while “public servants” become all the richer.
FACT:
The Pension Rights Centerreported last October, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, that only 19 percent of American workers are in a pension plan.
So, despite the lie that government employees are underpaid “victims,” the following cartoon represents how most Californians — and Americans — in the workforce don’t have guaranteed pensions, and many younger employees aren’t even familiar with the idea.
MORE FACTS:
In 2016, intrepid conservative researcher Steve Frank reported how lucrative pensions are making some California “public employees” very rich off the backs of financially-hurting taxpayers: “Updated numbers displayed at OpenTheBooks.com show there is a $2.8 billion annual cost to payout 21,862 six-figure public-sector retirees via CalPERS. It’s a massive payout equivalent to the combined income tax payments of nearly 1.6 million individual California taxpayers.”
City employees in the police and fire departments can receive abnormally high salaries. For example, the Transparent California database reports that, in 2022, in Anaheim, seven fire chiefs and captains made from $477,762 to $671, 238 in total pay and benefits. Even in Fresno with lower housing costs, the “top brass” of city and fire departments in 2022 were paid $350,000 a year in total pay and benefits. Another example is in San Diego, where, in 2022, both a police sergeant” and a “police sergeant” were both paid more than a half million dollars a year in total pay and benefits.
California state law (thank the corrupt, ruling Democrats) places the burden upon local governments, not police and fire deparments, to fund pensions. As one wealth management firm explains, in a defined-benefit plan: “The funds are guaranteed to the individual regardless of the performance of the investments in the larger pool, and the organization/business that you previously worked for is liable to cover the cost of all payments, even when the investment funds are unable to cover the cost.”
This continually growing pension burden has resulted in overly-generous police and fire retirement pensions significantly pressuring city and county budgets, even threatening them with insolvency. In 2016, the California Policy Centerwrote: “Five California counties reported that their pension contributions now exceed 10 percent of total revenues: Santa Barbara County (13.1 percent), Kern County (11 percent), Fresno County (10.7 percent), San Diego County (10.4 percent) and San Mateo County (10 percent) … A sixth county, Merced, is also expected to report that its required contributions topped 10 percent of 2015 revenue when it files its audit. We estimate Merced’s payments at slightly over 11 percent of revenue.”
Listen to fiscally-conservative professor of finance Joshua Rauh of Stanford University, who’s also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Like me and others, he’s blowing the whistle on the unjust and evil union-boss-and-Democrat-Party-politicians pension scheme, including reporting updated numbers in 2019: “In California, more than 62,000 retired public employees are receiving pensions of over $100,000 per year.” Wow — these retired employees — your “public servants” — receive more not working than most working Californians receive.
EVEN MORE FACTS:
Because cities and counties are legally liable (a bad state law of prostituting Democrat state legislators, who are loyal to their union-boss pimps) to fund increasingly more “catch-up” payments into pensions, the real story is California cities are being crushed by fire and police department pensions.
As California Policy Center co-founder Edward Ring sagely reported in 2018, in a case study of the San Mateo County city of Millbrae: “Currently, as can be seen on the table, for every dollar it pays active employees in base wages, Millbrae must contribute 59 cents to CalPERS. This does not include payments to CalPERS that Millbrae collects from its employees via withholding. The same data show that, by 2024, for every dollar Millbrae pays active employees in base wages, they will have to contribute 89 cents to CalPERS. Put another way, while Millbrae may expect its payroll costs to increase by $1.4 million, from $6.3 million today to $7.7 million in six years, their payment to CalPERS will increase by $3.1 million, from $3.7 million today to $6.8 million in 2024.
But here’s the rub. Nearly all of this increase to Millbrae’s pension costs are the “catch-up” payments on the city’s unfunded liability. In just six years Millbrae’s payment on its unfunded liability will increase by 99%, from $2.9 million today to $5.8 million in 2024.
Why?
What are the implications?
It is difficult to overstate how outrageous this is. Here’s a list:
1 – Virtually every pension “reform” over the past decade or so has exempted active public employees from helping to pay down the unfunded liability via withholding. Instead, their increased withholding – in some cases supposedly rising to “fifty percent of pension costs” (the PEPRA reforms) – only apply to the normal contribution.
2 – In order to appease the unions who, quite understandably, lobby for the lowest possible employee contributions to pension funds, the “normal cost” is calculated based on financially optimistic projections. The less time an actuary predicts a retiree will live, and the more an actuary predicts investments will earn, the lower the normal contribution.
3 – In order to cajole local elected officials to agree to pension benefit enhancements, the same overly optimistic, misleading projections were provided, duping decision makers into thinking pension contributions would never become a significant burden on cities and counties, and by extension, taxpayers.
4 – Because cities and counties couldn’t afford to pay down the growing unfunded liabilities attached to their pension plans, tricky accounting gimmicks were employed, where minimal catch-up payments were made in the present in exchange for bigger catch-up payments in the future. The closest financial analogy to what they did would be the “negative amortization” mortgages that were popular prior to the housing crash of 2008.
5 – The consequence of this chicanery is that today, as can be seen, catch-up payments on the unfunded liability are typically two to three times greater than the normal contribution. And it’s getting worse. In 2024, Millbrae, for example, will have a catch-up contribution that is nearly six times as much as their normal contribution.
6 – When a normal contribution isn’t enough, and the plan becomes underfunded, the level of underfunding is compounded every year because there isn’t enough money in the fund earning interest. The longer catch-up payments are deferred, the worse the situation gets.”
What an unholy mess! Similarly, in September 2018, City Journal’s investigative journalism, “Policing Pensions,“ informed us (as well as gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom, but he didn’t listen) that “The League of California Cities recently reported that their members expect pension costs to rise by at least 50 percent over just the next half-decade. Cities employing police officers and firefighters will face the highest burdens: for every $100 spent in salary on current employees, they will soon have to shell out at least $54 to the state’s pension fund, CalPERS.”
Only four years ago, the threat of out-of-control police and fire pensions was threatening city and county budgets, and the threat is exponentially worse today (yet the Democrat Party rulers of California, loyal prostitutes to their union-boss pimps, have done nothing to solve this). As the June 2020 CalMatters article, “Surging pension costs push more California cities toward bankruptcy,” reported:
Three California cities have declared bankruptcy in recent years, and fast-rising pension costs have been major factors in all. One was Vallejo, whose recently retired city manager, Daniel Keen, joined his colleagues in seeking relief, saying he expected pension costs for police to reach 98 percent of payroll in a decade and hinting that Vallejo could slip into insolvency again.
A new study for the League of California Cities, conducted by a consulting firm, Bartel Associates, projects that over the next seven years overall city pension costs, excluding health care, will nearly double, reaching an average of 15.8 percent of their general fund budgets by 2024-25. Costs for police and fire personnel will climb to well over 60 percent of payroll.
“The results of this study provide additional evidence that pension costs for cities are approaching unsustainable levels,” Bartel’s report warns. As those burdens outstrip revenue growth, it says, “many cities face difficult choices that will be compounded in the next recession.”
The chart below illustrates how California cities’ and counties’ pension debt for government employees (including police and fire department employees) dramatically increased with the pro-union bill signings of RINO governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in his second term (2007-2010) and after that, even higher during the first six years of Democrat governor Jerry Brown (2011-2019).
The harsh consequences upon local governments and taxpayers were explained in a 2018 paper by the Pacific Research Institute, which concluded: “In the end, political mandates cannot change economic realities. California can proceed as if the current promises of the public pension systems can be met, but there are costs of doing so. These costs, which will be imposed on future generations, will include higher tax burdens, bleaker economic prospects, and fewer core public goods and services.”
The creative, scary, and fuzzily-rendered cartoon below illustrates union bosses’ and their Democrat Party politicians’ monstrous cannibalization of city budgets, which your city councilmembers and county supervisors won’t tell you about.
Bottom line, when local candidates are endorsed by police and fire unions and win, they are “bought politicians” who will never go against their union-boss masters.So, because these anti-people Democrat or RINO politicians think your money is theirs, they come after you for it.
Nearly every election season, they lie that they need to improve roads, sewers, water facilities, roofs, infrastructure, “save the library,” or whatever they feel they have to say to deceive and coax more taxes, bonds, fees, assessments — more money — from the uninformed citizenry. And because these Democrat and RINO politicians are “bought” by the police and fire department unions, they hardly ever admit that government waste exists — when it surely does.
Yet there is a just and sure way to escape this lying, thieving stranglehold — but it’s probably going to take a well-drafted (without “holes”) state constitutional amendment in California that the people approve for the sake of fairness and protection from thieves.
As the Winter 2013 City Journal article, “The Pension Fund That Ate California,” explains: “CalPERS and its legislative allies keep resisting the one reform that would truly free California taxpayers from this ruinous pension system: moving it toward a 401(k)-style defined-contribution plan, as other states and municipalities, including Utah and Rhode Island, have done. In a defined-contribution plan, the government’s commitment ends after it makes its annual required contribution into a worker’s retirement account; the taxpayer’s liability also ends there. Under the CalPERS regime, by contrast, employees are guaranteed benefits even if the government hasn’t put aside money to pay for them, placing all the future liability on the taxpayer.”
PLEASE TAKE ACTION:
STEP 1: This March 5, 2024 California primary election, please oppose all money-grabs (any and all tax increases, tax extensions, bonds, fees, and assessments). Tell the thieves and liars “no more!” Instead, demand real fire and police department pension reform and tough, waste-finding conservative audits from outside of California. Please share my email with others and also share our special site, SaveCaliforniaElection.com.
STEP 2: Because of how unions and their “owned politicians” put deceptive tax hikes on the ballot, and since union bosses regularly spend union dues to elect and re-elect corrupt Democrat Party politicians, if you’re a union member, please resign from your union. You have the legal right to do so, while keeping your job, benefits, and more of your own money. Here’s how government employees can get out and here’s how private sector employees can stop funding the beast.
In the Bible, God commands respect for ownership rights and contractual rights “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. Now when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idle, and said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right you will receive.’ “So when evening had come, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the laborers and give them their wages, beginning with the last to the first.’ And when those came who were hired about the eleventh hour, they each received a denarius. But when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received each a denarius. And when they had received it, they complained against the landowner, saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.’ But he answered one of them and said, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?’” Jesus Christ, Savior of the world and God in the flesh, in Matthew 20:1-15
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.” Attributed to Scottish advocate/judge/writer/historian Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813)
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